


Fireteam Conversations

by Hokuto



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Conversations, Gen, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 18:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: A fireteam has a completely 100% serious talk about the Traveler.





	

It was Sylith-3's idea to go look for the Sibyl, because that kind of thing was always Sylith-3's idea.

"It's not as if you don't know other Warlocks," Allison said. "I know you know other Warlocks. _I_ know other Warlocks. It'd be easier to call one of them if you want to go to the Prison that badly." Admittedly, her objections had less to do with the Sibyl, even if the Sibyl gave her the creeps sometimes, and more to do with the really comfortable new couch she had just dragged all the way up to her Tower apartment from the City. Maybe, after an hour or two of appreciating the couch, she would feel more capable of dealing with Sylith-3's enthusiasm and the Prison of Elders.

"Yeah, but I like the Sibyl. She's cool and she's always willing to run Sunsinger with self-rez on," Sylith said, and that was that.

When they found the Sibyl three hours later, she was perched on the edge of a distant wall, about as far from the Tower's hub as a Guardian could get without actually leaving the Tower or falling to a temporary death off snowy cliffs. Allison was only surprised they'd found her at all; she could count the number of times she'd run into the Sibyl in the Tower on her Ghost's shell-stubs. The Sibyl's long legs hung over the wall, above a gulf of empty air that made Allison's head spin and knees ache, but the Sibyl had her golden eyes fixed on the Traveler overhead. In the falling evening light, a thick crescent slice of its cracked shell gleamed with the same brilliant gold.

"Hey, Sibyl!" Sylith said, waving, which didn't attract the Sibyl's attention at all, just like Allison trying to catch her breath from the climb up hadn't. "Sorry to bug you! It's just me and Allie. So, I heard from a couple guys who went out to the Reef yesterday that Variks is running a pretty sweet set of challenges in the Prison right now, and I know you don't really like going into the Prison but you do hang out with Variks a lot, so I thought maybe we could -"

"No," said the Sibyl.

"Aww, c'mon, it's always fun and I love the gear he gives out, the helmet makes me look a bull! Or maybe an airplane, I can never decide. Either way, badass."

"No," the Sibyl said again, but then she did look away from the Traveler to Sylith and Allison, and she lifted one hand from the stone wall to gesture at them. "Sit. I would speak with you."

Allison and Sylith exchanged glances. Sylith's green lights flickered briefly red, and then she settled down easily next to the Sibyl and let her legs dangle over the edge as well. Allison, like a sensible person, sat cross-legged beside Sylith, but a little farther back from the dizzying height in front of them.

"Well - this is nice," Sylith ventured, after a full minute of silence. "I mean. Great view out here, and we don't actually hang out that much when there isn't some big threat looming over everybody's heads, so it's kind of fun to -"

"Why did the Traveler stay?"

"Oh. I guess it's gonna be that kind of talk."

"According to the Speaker, it stayed to protect us," Allison said. "The Earth, that is. And whatever it did left it - comatose. It sacrificed itself for us." Curt, from his usual hiding place in her cloak's hood, whispered "Of course it did!" in her ear.

"Such is the story we are told," the Sibyl said. "And why would it protect us?"

"It did kind of show up and give us all this stuff," Sylith said, waving her hands vaguely in the City's direction. "And helped us build all kinds of things, including possibly me. That's worth some protecting, right? I'd stay and protect a place I helped out."

"Many are the worlds that the Traveler has visited, and yet it did not stay when the Darkness followed in its benevolent wake. So we know from the tale of the Eliksni and the Whirlwind, and from the Hive's accounts of their destruction." The Sibyl paused. "You have read the Books of Sorrow?"

Sylith buzzed softly. "You know, I started reading that stuff, and it was super interesting, but I was on Mars and Taken just kept popping up and I lost my place and well, I think I was somewhere around Xi Ro wanting to be a knight -"

"I read them," Allison said, before the Sibyl could respond too sharply. Sylith had spent as much time as either of them hunting down the fragments of Oryx's history, but she did tend to get distracted by a fight. Any fight. "I know what you're talking about. The Hive have been chasing the Traveler across the galaxy and destroyed every civilization they've come across, and many of them had been guided by the Traveler, like the Ammonite and the people of the Gift Mast - but it was always gone when the Hive showed up. Except here." She could feel Curt's shell shifting unhappily against her shoulder; he'd been deeply upset by some of those stories, but never managed to explain why.

"Just so. And thus I ask: Why was this planet any different? Why were these people worthy of the Traveler's protection and no others?"

"Is this a trick question about species-centrism or something? 'Cause you know how I feel about trick questions, and it starts with 'F-' and ends with '-ist of Havoc'..."

"I seek to understand the basic nature of the being which raised us," the Sibyl hissed, "and you would do well not to take such questions lightly!" She drew her legs up and stood, and a thin cold wind rustled through the folds of her heavy robes and her loose hair as she gazed across the City to the Traveler. "Once I was wise. Once I saw the paths behind me and before me, all the paths of the world, and the lost would come to me for guidance. Once I was complete in myself. And now..."

She stretched out one hand; her Ghost in its spiked Taken shell materialized in her palm, its spines drawn in protectively, and she closed her fingers around it. "Now my sight is clouded. Only one path lies ahead of me and I must walk it, whether I will or no, while the path behind me lies in shadow, the knowledge lost to time and Darkness. So much we do not know or understand - about the Traveler, about the Collapse, about our enemies. I am only a part of myself, and not the greater part, either. The power of void and sun and storm are strong, but they are not my own. And why am I lesser? Why am I forced into this path?" Her fingers tightened on her Ghost's shell. "Because of the Ghosts. Because of the _Traveler_."

"Please sit down before you fall off the wall," Allison said, trying not to look at the height below the Sibyl's feet. "And let your Ghost go, you're going to hurt it."

"I wasn't taking it lightly," Sylith mumbled, "I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a trick like that time with the Fallen..."

The Sibyl released her Ghost, which shuddered and dematerialized; when she sat, it was farther from the edge, with her legs folded neatly under her. "I will ask you again," she said. "Why is it that in this place, this time, the Traveler stayed?"

In the distance, the setting sun's light on the Traveler was deepening to red, as the glow of the City brightened and reflected from its shattered underside.

"Maybe it had nowhere else to go," Allison said, with some reluctance. "After everything the Hive have done - maybe we're all that's left." It was one of the first terrible thoughts she'd had as she read the Books of Sorrow, and she hadn't been able to rid herself of the awful image since: that every star in the sky she could see, every star too faint for human eyes, was lifeless, shining a futile light on barren planets devoured and abandoned by the Hive and their worms.

The Sibyl, of course, said, "A likely possibility," because in her universe "reassurance" was something that happened to other people. "But why not seek out a place to hide less likely to draw the Hive? Why not strengthen itself and run again before it could be caught?"

"Maybe," Sylith said, "maybe it - loved us?"

"Loved," the Sibyl said, slowly.

"For inscrutable giant wandering alien ball reasons, I mean. Not because we're innately lovable and great, although, like, compared to the Hive I think we're pretty okay. Definitely have some issues we're still working on, but mostly not genocidal worm-worshipping assholes who do weird shit to reality. Mostly."

"Loved," the Sibyl said again. "Tell me, Sylith-3. Do you love the people of the City you protect?"

"Uh - well, maybe 'love' is kind of a strong word..." Sylith's lights were flickering purple now. "I like plenty of people, though. Like Eva, she's great, she lets me have so much candy during Festival of the Lost and her masks are so detailed! And Amanda Holliday, I like her, you would not believe the shit she pulled out of _Agonarch Karve_ 's engines the other day and she didn't even blink. Oh, there's that guy who's always hanging around in the Future War Cult lounge who gets all stammery when he sees me, I can't remember his name right now, though. And Zavala's really pretty sweet once you get to know him, even if he does start grabbing all his stuff off the table when he sees me coming -"

"Then maybe you should stop jumping on the Vanguard's table," Allison said hopelessly.

"Look, if they don't want people jumping on it, it shouldn't be such a great height for jumping on. And I only broke a tablet that one time and I paid for a new one right away and apologized, so that worked out fine."

To her credit, the Sibyl didn't even sigh before she said, "And is it these people you think of as you enter battle?"

"Okay, I _know_ that one's a trick question." Sylith crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against her gauntlets. "'Cause if I'm fighting, I'm mostly thinking about stuff like how long till my next grenade and where that fucking acolyte is hiding and whether I can get that Cabal guy down in one punch. And about where everyone else on the fireteam is so I know they're okay, but I mean, that's not really the same thing as thinking, 'Gosh, I sure hope everyone back in the City is safe because I'm out here,' you know?"

"And so I have seen you throw away your life a thousand, a hundred thousand times," said the Sibyl, "for the sake of people you barely know, whose names you forget, whose faces you do not carry with you into battle for the strength they may give you. Can something so impartial be called love?"

"I didn't say anything about me _personally_ loving everyone, I thought we were talking about the Traveler -"

"People can love in the abstract. And love the abstract," Allison said. "Ideals, like justice or peace, or the City... It's not exactly the same thing as romantic love or familial love, but we still call it love."

"A point well-made." The Sibyl's eyes had turned to the Traveler again. "And yet my heart is not satisfied. My heart asks: Is it love that calls us from death, only to send us into war? Is it love that drives us along the pathways of darkness, where despair haunts our every step? Is it love that shares no affection, shows no favor, allows no choice?" The wind whipped through her hair again and through the joints of Allison's armor, and Allison shivered. "Perhaps there is love in the Traveler I cannot see. Even the Hive love, in their twisted fashion. But my heart says to me: Perhaps there are forces beyond such things as love and hate and fear, beyond our understanding, that bound the Traveler to us."

"Wait, wait, I know this one!" Sylith said, humming with excitement. "It's the Light and the Darkness, right? Those are totally the forces. Right? Did I get it?"

Allison held her breath for the entire long moment it took before the Sibyl turned to Sylith, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, "Go to the Prison."

"Huh?"

"Go to the Prison of Elders. Earn your prizes. Tell Variks that I will see him soon."

Sylith's lights flashed through a rainbow before settling into an icy white. "You know what? Fine. I'm going. C'mon, Croaker," and her Ghost appeared over her shoulder as she stood, his eye narrowed to stare down at the Sibyl. "I don't know why you even ask me anything if you never actually want to hear what I think..."

She vanished in a haze of transmat particles and left the two of them alone.

"I know she's a really - Titan-ish Titan," Allison said, "but you could go a little easier on her. She tries."

The Sibyl sighed. "I do not intend to be cruel," she said, "but there is an envy in me that I cannot always control. She is pure in her purpose, as I am not; and she is very brave."

"I have seen you fight. I wouldn't exactly call you a coward." In the realm of Oryx's Echo, where shields had failed them, the Sibyl had taunted the Echo to her and fallen under its sword, only to flare back into life wreathed in fire and kill the Echo herself. "Also, I'm not sure that yelling 'You think I need my hammers to kick your shitty ass? Guess again, motherfucker!' at Oryx really counts as being either brave or pure."

At that the Sibyl chuckled, but briefly, and then she said in apparent seriousness, "An absence of cowardice is not bravery... I'll give Sylith my apologies when I see her next."

"I can tell her if you want, I'll probably see her a lot sooner. I think I could use a round of challenges in the Prison now just to get warm." Allison got up and stretched, and found herself looking to the Traveler, too; Curt wriggled free of her hood and sat on her head, and from his position she could tell his gaze was pointed in the same direction. As usual, something in her chest ached at it hanging in silence, as if it were an old friend or part of her family whose voice she hadn't heard in too long.

Impulsively, she said, "I don't think you're entirely right. About the Traveler not loving us... Maybe it's not a kind of love we know, but it's not as careless or cruel as you think. Just - harsh, and desperate, but I think it did care. Does care, still."

The Sibyl stared at her oddly, her faint eyebrows raised, and Allison's cheeks grew warm. Why had she gone and said something like that, with absolutely nothing to back it up? But the Sibyl glanced away first and said quietly, "I do not know. There is a word I see when I look at the Traveler, and it is not love; but what the word I see means, in this place and time, I do not know. In this matter you may understand more than I - and Sylith may understand more than either of us."

"I don't know if I would go that far," Allison said, and she pulled Curt off her head. "I guess I should head out... You know how to call us if you need us for anything."

"I shall. Safe journeys."

Once she'd transmatted back up to her ship and settled in at the console, she started to enter coordinates for the Reef. Curt kept darting around the cabin instead of perching on his favorite spot by the canopy, until she finally said, "Could you keep still for one minute? I'm going to put in the wrong numbers and land us on Europa."

"Even you're not that bad at directions," Curt said, but he quit fluttering and plopped himself down on her head again. "Just so you know, _I_ think the Traveler loves us."

"Really?"

"Well, the two of us, anyway. I'm not so certain about some Guardians. Or Executor Hideo. But definitely us, specifically."

"You got any evidence for that?"

"No - it's just a feeling." His stubs shifted around on her stubbled scalp. "But as an actual, official direct creation of the Traveler, my feelings ought to carry some weight, don't you agree?"

Allison laughed as she entered the final numbers and started the ship's engines. "Sure, buddy. Let's go see if we can catch Sylith before she spends five hours trying to headbutt Noru'usk on her own."

**Author's Note:**

> Very loosely inspired by [this fanvid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVy084nqJjw), and also because I just like my weirdo Guardians talking to each other.


End file.
